Electrical Help with T5 Retro setup

[joseney21]

Electrical Help with T5 Retro setup Hello all, i decided to DIY when making the switch to T5 but now i'm a little confused as I have very very little experience with electrical (none actually, i thought the wiring book from HD would help). First question is

where do I put in the red cable from the ballast into the endcap??

this is what i think it should be like
pic1
this is what i'm left with (how tight should the endcaps be tightened??)
pic2

Second question would be what to do with one yellow cable and four endcaps
pic3
and last question is how do i ground the ballast (it doesn't have a green wire)??

pic 4

thanks to everyone for their help.

 

[spykes]

oh gawd, jose your doing it wrong LOL
underneath the feet of the endcaps has a hole that turns into two smaller holes. you put two wires into each hole and that matches up to each of the wire of the ballast.

 

[FRY]

first of all what ballast are you useing and how many lamps and what size lamp whould help to know,
you ground the ballast case,the first pic. the red wire dont go there turn the socket around on the bottom is were the wire go

 

[joseney21]

lol, i just found out...i thought i was going to have to wait a while for a reply here so i posted first on RC...here is that thread

http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=6887202#post6887202

 

[joseney21]

shouldn't have doubted the resources and members we have at MR

 

[joseney21]

do i need one wire going into each hole and then connect that to the red wire from the ballast??so you guys are saying the wire goes in here

 

[joseney21]

btw Fry it's a fulham workhorse 7 ballast, lighting four 54wHO T5 bulbs

 

[joseney21]

don't mean to get off topic,dave you coming to play paintball on saturday??

 

[FRY]

the pic shows put jumper in each socket then put 1 red to each socket
then same with the other 4 sockets then connect all the yellow together

 

[joseney21]

where do i get the jumpers??does home depot carry them??the diagram showing the jumper on the bottom right also shows 4 holes, the endcaps i'm using only have two...

 

[FRY]

were you mounting the ballast ??

 

[joseney21]

where should i mount it?? come to think of it inside the hood doesn't sound too safe....

 

[FRY]

you can use some of the wire from the leads of the ballast there allways to long depends on were you put the ballast, are you useing a metal reflector

 

[joseney21]

yes, i'm using four individual metal reflectors

 

[FRY]

make sure you ground the reflectors,were you installing the ballast

 

[kimoyo]

Someone please make sure I have this right.

Joseney,

You don't have to buy a "jumper" it just the way you have to wire the endcaps. Each endcap has a yellow wire socket (hole) and a red wire socket. You have one yellow wire, called wire 1, coming from the ballast into the yellow wire socket in the first encap, call it socket A. Then you have a separate yellow wire, wire 2, pushed into the same socket A. The other end of wire 2 will then go to the next endcap into its yellow wire socket, socket B. And then you put another separate wire, wire 3, into socket B with the other end going to another endcap and so on and so on until you get to the last endcap which just has one wire going into its yellow socket.

Does that make sense?

 

[joseney21]

sounds like what fred from RC was suggesting, except you're saying to cut the wire into separate pieces. would it matter if i twisted the stripped pieces of wire 1 & 2 together to put in the same hole in the endcap(i would do the same for the other wires)???

btw you're awfully close to where i'm at in the BX. where in the heights are you??i work in the heights also (but not until the end of the month, sweet sweet vacation!!!).

 

[kimoyo]

sounds like what fred from RC was suggesting, except you're saying to cut the wire into separate pieces. would it matter if i twisted the stripped pieces of wire 1 & 2 together to put in the same hole in the endcap(i would do the same for the other wires)???

Yeah thats the same thing (they have to go into the same hole, twisting doesn't change anything) and you don't have to cut it into separate wires just seemed easier to explain for me.

BTW, please be careful when doing this.

btw you're awfully close to where i'm at in the BX. where in the heights are you??i work in the heights also (but not until the end of the month, sweet sweet vacation!!!).

Close to Columbia hospital. Yeah that seems like a cool vacation.

 

[FRY]

you use the same wires from the ballast and juct cut them to make small jumpers the wires from the ballast are long enough to make jumpers from

 

[joseney21]

Yeah thats the same thing (they have to go into the same hole, twisting doesn't change anything) and you don't have to cut it into separate wires just seemed easier to explain for me.

but if i do cut them does that change anything( i couldn't do it without cutting)??i'm assuming it doesn't but need to ask....